Central’s Esports team had six out of their 13 teams make the PlayVS Central Region spring playoffs, making those teams in the top 32 teams out of about 125. The six teams that made it were both Super Smash Bros varsity and JV, Mario Kart, Splatoon, League of Legends and Rocket League. Head Coach Johnathan Franta is feeling decent about the playoffs.
“There are teams and there are days where I feel extremely confident and then there are days where I worry,” Franta said.
Central’s esports team has a lot of participation with about 87 students involved during the spring season. There is plenty of skills to go around between all the students and everyone plays different, so freshman Jaxn Montgomery thinks some of his team’s strongest skills are analysis of other teams and defense.
“We have really good analysis of other teams and how they play. I say that’s a good thing because often we see how the team plays, like we see that if they’re really aggressive and we see that and we try to counterplay them, we’re really good at that,” Montgomery said.
Having so many people involved is wanted and the esports team is always looking for more players, but there’s a lot of different people and everyone plays differently. The switch from playing for fun to competitive and the switch from solo to group can be hard. Montgomery thinks the team has their strengths but also their rougher areas.
“We all make mistakes within the game, no one has never not made a mistake and that’s okay. I think we all have our individual things to improve to make the team better, like things within the game that can make us better,” Montgomery said.
Unlike other sports, and especially with playoffs, esports doesn’t get their schedule and games ahead of time. With all the students there can be the occasional mix-up and scheduling can be difficult. Despite scheduling difficulties, sophomore Isaias Gonzalez and Montgomery think the team has put a lot of hard work in and got better from last season.
“We definitely took a long time only cause we kind of sucked for a while, but we just gotta play every day. I wasn’t a fan of it for a while, but I’m starting to like it more and more, the more we play,” Gonzalez said.
Central not only has strong video game abilities and skills, but they have a strong team bond and Franta thinks that is also a reason there is so much participation and the teams made it into the playoffs.
“Culture, I’m building an environment. I believe students want to be a part of. I have a very strict policy that there’s no judgement. If you play a game, you don’t make fun of other people for the games they play or what they do. You’re allowed to be yourself; you’re allowed to nerd out and play a game. You can try a game you’ve never played,” Franta said.
